Jorge Aguilar and Amanda Rosa, the couple behind the popular pop-up Border Town, have teamed up with business partner Ben Turley and secured a lease at 189 Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint. Rosa told What Now New York that they are targeting a September opening for their first brick-and-mortar location.
Aguilar and Rosa have been running their pop-up, known for their handmade flour tortillas and tacos, since 2021. However, they have been looking for a good place to settle down permanently and open up shop for a while.
“We have been bouncing around all over Brooklyn,” Rosa said. “All of that has really been to work toward the ultimate goal, which is obviously a brick-and-mortar restaurant.”
Aguilar and Rosa are Greenpoint locals, so when an opportunity arose in the neighborhood, they took it.
“We’ve been part of this community since we [moved] here to Brooklyn in 2019,” Rosa said. “We were hoping if we were ever going to open a permanent spot, it would happen here. We landed in the right place.”
Customers can expect a bright interior with plenty of natural light and a daytime cafe atmosphere. The design will include nods to Mexican architecture, including terracotta tile and rounded arches. They will also incorporate desert fauna into the design.
The menu will remain consistent with the pop-up offerings, including handmade flour tortillas, tacos, guisados and carne con chile. They also plan to serve Mexican pastries made in-house, including coyotas, pastries that they plan to fill with seasonal fruit fillings.
“It’s going to be nice to finally have a place that we can really call home and grow into and plant ourselves in the community here,” Rosa said. “The pop-up life has been great. It’s been fun. We’ve learned so much, and everything we’ve learned along the way has gotten us to this point. But it is a nomadic lifestyle. It’s exhausting, constantly having to figure out how to operate in different kitchens and under different circumstances. So it will be really nice for us to actually build out the restaurant the way that we need to for our concept to be able to function most efficiently.”
